The drawing, Maggs explained, led to the idea of bringing together as much original artwork and printed material featuring the graphic art of Evelyn Waugh as possible, as Waugh was an avid bibliophile. He was addicted to fine editions, planned and released special and limited editions of his own books, and put incredible thought and design into his books’ designs.
Running through July 28, 2017, the exhibition features what is thought to be the first such exhibition devoted to Waugh’s ambitions as an artist—his work often uniquely combining an unfashionable Victorian aesthetic with that of the Jazz Age, and includes the dust jacket design from Scoop, a manuscript of Vile Bodies, a painting of Napoleon by the artist “Bruno Hat,” an invented persona that tricked many in British high society and was partly concocted by Waugh, and drawings by Waugh done for his college magazines including a series illustrating the “Seven Deadly Sins”—his entry for No. 1 being “The intolerable wickedness of him who drinks alone.”